Smoking Causes Cancer, and Depression

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jun 27, 6:13AM EDT · Published Jun 27, 4:18AM EDT

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Smoking may be bad for physical health, bad enough to cause dreaded diseases and death. It turns out the habit also causes psychological stress. And, all along, smoking was supposed to be a stimulant.

According to Gallup:

Americans who smoke are in worse emotional health than are those who do not smoke. Smokers have an average Emotional Health Index Score of 72.0, much lower than the average of 81.1 for nonsmokers.

And:

Americans in poverty are more likely to smoke compared with those who are not in poverty, 33% vs. 19.9%, and smokers are more likely to have depression and other chronic health problems. But smokers, regardless of their income level, report worse emotional health than those who do not smoke. This means that socioeconomic status alone does not account for the differences in emotional health between smokers and nonsmokers; rather there is something else about being a smoker that relates to having worse emotional health.

New warnings on the side of cigarette packs may soon include “This product will make you depressed.”

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.